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Some years ago, I attended a flower essence workshop by a French practitioner who said: „Good therapists don‘t push a client, and they only give a few essences -- simplify, simplify, simplify.“ I developed my best method of helping clients in flower therapy from that workshop. We were told to draw, and on the basis of the drawings we analyzed what we felt. I was amazed how the drawings described my state at that moment.

Coming back to my country, I decided to ask all my clients to report their dreams and to draw before the first interview and at follow-up interviews. Dreams and drawing are two powerful tools to connect us to our intuition and the right side of the brain. It is easier to connect to emotions through this hemisphere than the rational, educated left hemisphere. A notebook beside the bed helps in writing down the dreams first thing in the morning.

When analyzing dreams and drawings in essence therapy, here are some principles. Try to contaminate the interpretation as little as possible with your expectations, background, or personal symbols. Let the client speak freely in order to illuminate what was in the closet of the unconscious mind. Ask the client to discuss the feelings that the dream or drawing arouses. This is the biggest clue to the healing process. Ask the client for spontaneous associations: what images come to mind?

dream castleSymbols are any element or object you wish to point out in a drawing or dream interpretation. Ask for the significance of a color, shape or size. Some therapists like to interpret colors themselves, but I prefer to let the client speak with free associations. One client came because she worried about her son, and drew me a red sun. After I saw this, I was intuitively prompted to ask if something made her angry. She replied that her husband was having an affair and everybody acted as if she didn‘t know.

How do the elements in the dream or drawing relate with each other? Are they close, far, or equidistant? Do they come before or after one another? Is the symbol for the self (often a house or the dream‘s main blue bottlescharacter) strong, passive, determined, angry, aggressive, happy or sad in the dream or drawing? Look for clues that you can count. Four glasses of colored water could mean four different essences, four months of treatment.

Organic disturbances that are not picked up in a conscious state come up in dreams and drawings. An infertile client indicated a blockage symbolically as a line that disconnected her pelvis from her legs. In testing her for Star of Bethlehem due to her symptoms, she recognized being abused as a child, so hypnosis and psychotherapy were advised.

A healing can be confirmed through a beautiful dream. Let me give an example of how dreams and drawings contribute to essence therapy. A client with arthritis was given -- among other essences -- Amazonian Essence, also Mariposa Lily because she was adopted by a paternal aunt. Mariposa Lily gives a sense of protection and heals the relationship with the mother. Amazonian Essence was given instead of Rock Water, the usual anti-rigidity flower, because I felt it was more powerful, and she is very evolved spiritually.blue dream garden

The first week of essence therapy she dreamed of an empty old house. She was with two friends and some people she didn‘t know but felt comfortable with. There was a rumor among the people in the house that some outsiders were going to menace them. The locks on the doors and windows didn‘t seem secure, so she went through the back door. She discovered a beautiful garden, and the feeling of danger disappeared. She asked the friends that were with her to follow her. Then they found a beautiful river, quiet and calm. She told her friends that they had to traverse the river, and on the other shore they would feel better.

This is how we interpreted the dream. The house is how she feels about herself: a bit old, somehow empty, although surrounded by people. The threats could be somehow the old fears from childhood (adoption issues). But the dream is good. She is a leader, who finds solutions. At that moment she remembered that the inner garden was the same one that she saw in a Deepak Chopra TV show, so we concluded that she might be looking for her inner teacher. The river is obviously the Amazonian (river) essence, in which she would have to be immersed in order to heal. This is a healing dream, which tells her not to fear, you can find solutions and you will go through the healing waters.the world in strong hands

I was also astonished that this client came glowing to her next appointment and made a drawing of a beautiful smiling sun, star and moon. The earth was held in the sky with some powerful hands, which had a big heart at the bottom. I asked her if she was involved with Reiki, for the drawing seemed much like Reiki to me. She said no, but that lately she had felt attracted to the subject.

Mariposa Lily and Amazonian essence were kept in the second mixture, because I still sensed in her dream a need of protection and for crossing a river. But Heart Orchid and Vervain were added. She is a hard-working leader in her job, and had stomach problems lately. The Solar Plexus and power issues relate physically to the stomach. The drawing was asking to open her heart. Heart Orchid elevates the solar plexus energy to the heart and opens it. Vervain would help her with the power issues.

Here are some essences that reinforce the connection to dreams and drawings. Higher Self Orchid (Andreas Korte) is a powerful essence, which gives full potential to our Inner wisdom, because it activates the real self, the center of our mandalas, our inner teacher. It can be used to establish a strong connection to this wisdom. Dreams become stronger with this essence. Korte‘s Interiorization Orchid helps to develop the inner vision and see within the core. FES‘s Chaparral liberates stress and enhances the knowledge of the unconscious and past lives. It helps us remember dreams and to deepen their contents. FES‘s Shasta Daisy gives depth to our thoughts and lets us have an integral vision of what is going on, as if we are forming a mandala. We begin to see completeness. FES‘s Forget-Me-Not helps us to remember dreams, and to have lucid dreams.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leda Abril Moreno, well-known Nuclear Physician and Children‘s Writer in her native Panama, opened the first Flower Therapy Clinic in 1998, after learning the Bach System in France. She combines alternative and allopathic medicine, giving workshops on Dreams, Symbolism and Writing, Flower Essences, Drawing Analysis, and Stress Reduction to universities, health practitioners and the general public. Tropical Flower Essences are her current study. Leda can be reached at ledabril - at - yahoo.com.